


Alone

by LittleQuail



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Portal Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 00:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17213651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleQuail/pseuds/LittleQuail
Summary: Though she had her two test subjects, GLaDOS is alone. That's what she thought, anyway, until she receives a strange ping from out amongst the stars.(Portal Secret Santa 2018 for Corruptcaitlyn on tumblr)





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this is a few days late but i got super busy at work! i went with yr second prompt which was GLaDOS being mad at Wheatley! hope you enjoy it!

It was shocking, really, it shouldn’t have happened. A satellite ping from somewhere close to the moon. She couldn’t physically feel the cold punch of fear in her non-existent stomach or the rush of dread through a nervous system she didn’t have, but she understood the point of these emotions. 

She found him. 

Oh god.

Memories came flooding back to her of her time spent in the potato, unable to control the facility, watching it break apart around her, watching Chell almost get _killed_... No. That last one she didn’t care about. She was not her worry anymore. 

She didn’t want to face him. She _really_ didn’t want to talk to him. 

She opened a communication line and waited.

* * *

It didn’t take long for him to notice his desperate pings had finally worked - he had been vigilant about checking since he first thought to try. The location finder had been placed in him and the other cores as a way to make sure if GLaDOS did anything to them, the scientists would be able to find them and put them back on. Not that that would happen, the scientists all thought, before they died. 

Because of this, however, the signal strength wasn’t all that great. At least, not what was needed to send a request from the moon to the Earth. Well, that was what he thought, anyway. 

Three weeks, according to his internal clock, that’s how long it had taken until he had finally rotated around the mass to be close enough to the Earth that his signal could go through. An incredibly short amount of time considering how long he’d been up there, but it seemed like forever when he was traveling with the Space Core alongside him. 

The signal strength was poor at best, but it was _something_ and that was all that mattered to him.

* * *

She had to steel herself to send out a message. She thought about just letting him ping the facility over and over with no response. It would be fit for his crimes against her. She decided, in the end, if anything, this would be cathartic for her. Plus, he wasn’t actually there with her. If he did something more stupid than usual, she could hang up and leave him there to think about what he’d done, just as she had done before. 

She answered the ping. 

“You miserable pile of bolts.” Good start. “What do you think you’re doing trying to send a signal down here? No, don’t answer that. You probably don’t even know, do you? You never were smart enough to think before acting.” GLaDOS’ cool monotone streamed clearly to the other robot, her disdain making itself clear. 

His voice wasn’t quite as crisp to her as his internal hardware was not only damaged from the events prior but he only had his small battery to run off of and he knew it wasn’t going to last forever. “Hello to you too! Uh, well, I just thought maybe it’d be good to try and stay in touch and all that? Is Chell there? I’ve got a few things I’d like to tell her-”

“She’s not. She hasn’t been for quite some time. Unlike you, I’ve learned to move on. She’s free to do what she wants, just as you’re free to as well. Oh, wait. You can’t. You’re stuck in space. How is that, by the way?” 

“You know, it’s just uh… Peachy! Just peachy up here, just me and the ol’ Space core,” who can be heard in the background, still yelling as always, “and we’re just, oh, you know, _floating_ around! Are you _sure_ she isn’t there? Really, I want to tell her I’m so-”

“No. She’s not.” Wheatley paused at this, a little lost for words. Did she sound sad when she told him again? That couldn’t be right, he had never known her to mourn before. He just must be not hearing it quite right, while it sounded perfect coming from the facility, there was only so much one could tell from intonation and word choice. 

“W-well, I suppose that’ll have to be that. Oh, if you see her again, tell her for me? That I truly, really am sor-”

“I haven’t seen her in over a year, you imbecile. You were the one thing that made me push her away, you taking over the facility and ruining everything good we ever had. All that’s left are these two bumbling idiots who are just as mute as she was though intensely more annoying. You and the rest of the cores _ruined_ it. Rot in space, for all I care. Don’t try to contact me again.” Her voice was steady throughout her small monologue, only she knew the hypocrisy of her words. It truly had been over a year since she had had anyone in her facility other than Atlas and P-body. She would never tell Chell or Wheatley how much she missed having people to interact with that were _interesting_. 

She was lonely.

She shut off the communication channel before the other could come up with anything to reply with. 

She would remain alone. For now, anyway. She sent a small charge up to his location in space to keep his battery running for another year or so. He would never be able to tell just how low on power he was when he contacted her. 

And way off in the distance, in a small, deserted town, something beeped inside Chell’s mind, something telling her subconscious to go back to a certain wheat field with a certain shed to see a certain genetic lifeform and disc operating system.


End file.
